1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a drawing device for drawing by ejecting and curing a photo-curing ink.
2. Related Art
Photo-curing ink (UV-curing ink) that is cured by UV irradiation has recently been attracting attention for use in inkjet printers and the like.
The difference between UV-curing ink and regular water-based ink or oil-based ink is that after the UV-curing ink is applied on a substrate (including printing paper or other recording media) or the like, the ink is rapidly cured by irradiation with an appropriate quantity of UV rays.
Such characteristics enable UV-curing ink to produce stable printing quality regardless of the ink permeability and other properties of the substrate.
Curing the ink immediately after it is applied also makes it possible to prevent the ink from spreading out.
Even when ink of a different color is applied over existing ink to create a desired hue, applying the different ink after curing the bottom ink makes it possible to prevent the hue from being affected by co-mixing; i.e., it is possible to prevent the wrong color from being produced.
There has been proposed such an inkjet-type recording device (drawing device) that uses UV-curing ink, in which a UV radiating device is provided for radiating UV rays to ink ejected onto a recording medium (substrate), the UV radiating device being provided on the periphery of a recording head (droplet ejection head) for ejecting a UV-curing ink in the form of minute ink drops (droplets) (see, e.g., Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-188983). In this recording device, the UV radiating device is provided at both ends of a carriage for reciprocally moving the recording head in the width direction of the recording medium.